Fragments
by Foxfire1
Summary: Fifty SW: KotOR ficlets, featuring characters and situations from both games. Written for the 1Fandom Livejournal community.


**Raise: **Davik Kang's bullyboys had seen Canderous obliterate rakghouls, rivals and deadbeats, but they didn't look at him with _real_ respect until he shouldered his cannon and marched inside Kang's throne room to demonstrate the proper way to ask for a raise.

**Yes: **Her master's presence washed over her, a tide of hunger and sluggish desire that tried to extinguish whatever it could reach; it nearly pulled Visas under, but she remembered the moment of peace in her cell, remembered the careful, hesitant friendship she'd built with the exiled Jedi, and stood against the flood of negation with a tiny, stubborn _yes_.

**Layer: **In a mental mirror, she stripped off the layers one by one - Revan's mask, all the weapons, the Jedi robes, even the banter that was sword and shield at once - and wondered who she was at her skin.

**Sign: **She couldn't go on like this, Bastila reflected, looking for signs that her charge might...revert; she was on her way up to the cockpit to tell her - well, tell her _something_ - when the ship rocked in the grip of a tractor beam.

**Try: **At their formal recognition as Knights, Malak saw the corners of Revan's mouth quivering and quailed a little; Revan smiling was pleasant enough, but Revan trying _not _to smile meant nothing but trouble.

**Give: **"Um, here," Mission said tentatively to the huddled shape - all rage and matted, reeking fur a moment ago, now pressing urgently back against the slum wall - and gave the Wookiee the largest share of the scraps of food she'd collected that day.

**Great: **Chuundar knew he would never be a great warrior like Freyyr or even Zaalbar; he also knew that he didn't have to be, not when he could talk faster and smoother than his (both quite mad, it's a tragedy, really) father and brother.

**Compare: **The hope of the Jedi was brooding in her quarters, and the Sith Lord was giggling with the Twi'lek in the galley; comparing these, Bastila began to understand the concept of irony.

**Listen: **"Listen", the Jedi said, and Mira had obeyed; sometimes the Force was a song and sometimes it was a shriek, but she couldn't close her ears to it now that she'd begun to hear.

**Choice: **Choose the light, choose the dark, choose to stand or to fall - Revan had been flooded with choices, but as she disarmed Bastila in a frantic flurry that left them both bloody, she didn't know if she could choose to destroy the fallen Jedi who was sister and mother and friend at once.

**Pale: **The lightsaber's pale glow lit no more than her face and hands, and the Exile forced herself past the door of the Korriban tomb, knowing that whatever waited inside was something she feared more than the Dark Side.

**Tough: **The General had thought she was tougher than this - that the hill on Dxun, the fire and blood and scorching metal everywhere had divorced her from all her Masters' teachings about life and the Force - but Malachor V broke her nonetheless.

**Risk: **Carth tried to convince her the risk was too much - they'd find some other way to rescue Bastila, one that didn't involve hopping onto a bomb with a couple of propulsor units strapped on - but when he saw the gleeful way she was looking at the swoop bike, he knew it wouldn't do any good.

**Name: **"My name's not Atton," he snapped, goaded past endurance by the Exile's probing- "And it's not Jaq, and it's none of a dozen others I've used, so stop _asking_, dammit!"

**Tall: **"_Everybody's_ taller than me; you get used to it," Revan told Freyyr, craning her neck and quite a bit of her back to meet the Wookiee's eyes.

**Price: **Skirting the edges of the Dark Side had been the price Revan paid for her triumph as a warleader; Malak had hoped it would end with Mandalore's defeat, but one look at the faint, feral glint in her eyes told him otherwise.

**High: **_Too high, too high,_ she thought, frantically wrenching the swoop bike away from an obstacle that loomed at her- _too low_, she amended, as it glanced off another one and jolted every bone in her body.

**Hello: **Atton's breath blew out in a huff of relief or anger when he and Kreia opened Goto's prison hatch to find the Exile seated on the floor, scowling over a heap of disassembled droid parts; she looked up at his approach and said mildly, "Hello."

**Owned: **_I will not be owned, ever again, _Zaalbar thought, and readied himself; if the Little One couldn't find a way to free him from the Gamorreans, he would shatter his own skull on the walls of the cell before they came for him.

**New: **The ancient artifact waited for him, furled like a malignant bud, but Jolee ignored it and rapped on its guardian computer instead; he'd come up with a new line of questions, and maybe _this_ time...

**Keep: **It was a struggle, every moment, for Nihilus to keep from consuming the Miraluka that served him; all that saved it was his knowledge that it would lead him to more food.

**Under: **Only Malak knew what she looked like under the mask any longer; he feared her more without it, because she looked so much the same.

**Compliment: **"You have beautiful eyes," Atton tried; she poked her head out from under the drive cowling and said, "I have perfectly ordinary eyes, and _you_ are trying to get into my pants."

**Summer: **She'd wished for Dantooine's breezy summers on Dxun, and pined for Dxun's lush fecundity on the hardscrabble worlds of the Rim; now, craving silence amid the clamor of so many minds, the Exile wondered if she would ever learn acceptance.

**Red: **Freyyr roams the Shadowlands in a red haze of rage, because rage is easier to face than the pain of a world lost to outsiders, a people lost to slavers, a son lost to treachery.

**Dance: **In Vogga's sanctuary, the General danced with the same bleak competence she brought to everything else, and Bao-Dur wondered what it would be like to see her do something - anything - for joy and not necessity.

**Reflect: **In her darker moments - and there were many - Revan reflected that the only reason the Council named her a hero was that they knew what a torment mercy could be.

**Nail: **Sion bursts out of the kolto tank, shards driving into his fissured body like nails, and welcomes the resurgence of pain as he goes on the hunt.

**Remove: **In some scenarios, the exiled Jedi brought peace, and in others, merely increased destruction, but remove the Exile entirely, and all equations dissolved into chaos; if she couldn't be removed, thought G0-T0, the question was how best to control the human.

**Hands: **Atton glanced at his hands, remembering them shaking on a blaster trigger, curled lovingly around any number of blades, clenched white-knuckled around a control yoke as he fled the Sith, and wondered how he could believe himself worthy of a lightsaber that was given rather than stolen.

**Stop: **Jolee often thinks of trying to talk with the feral Wookiee, but something always stops him - how can he heal the old chief's pain when he can't even ease his own?

**Noise: **There were dangers still to be faced - the noise of the Upper City burning and crumbling above them reminded them all of that - but Rukil Wrinkle-Skin looked only ahead, the hope of their promised refuge singing along his nerves.

**Job: **"We've got a _job_ to do, woman!" Carth yelled after her, but she just set her jaw and marched back into the sewers, intent on the rest of the Outcast journals.

**Open: **The young Knight had opened Juhani's cage; now she struggled to open herself to the Jedi Council, to muster the calm and humility to petition for an apprentice's place.

**Touch: **Yuthura Ban ran a thoughtful finger over the intricate designs of her tattoos; each one was a lesson learned, and she would not give them up for the Jedi, the Sith, or all the old masters come again.

**Water: **They'd fled to Manaan for repairs after escaping the _Leviathan_; Carth found her watching the surging waters with hungry eyes in a too-composed face, and growled, "You don't get out of it that easy, Revan."

**Save: **_A smuggler saving a Jedi from slavers - not exactly the stuff of legend, _she thought, and in the heat of battle there was no time to notice how the lightsaber she'd salvaged from Brejik's body felt so utterly _right_ in her hand.

**Sell: **The Cathar woman shut the door quietly behind her and headed for the Lower City, hoping Juhani would obey her and not follow; she didn't want the girl to see what might happen, but she'd sell what she had to to feed her cub.

**Next: **After the ceremony, Carth asked her what came next; she tucked an arm through his and said, "Plastic surgery and a fast ship to the Rim - wanna come?"

**Please: **"What would you do to please me?" Revan crooned, and Malak felt her will wrapping around his, felt his hand with the lightsaber rising toward the vulnerable line of his jaw.

**Pet: **"He's my friend, not my pet," Mission told the Vulkar with a disdainful lift of her chin, fighting to suppress a grin as Zaalbar loomed into position behind him.

**Shadow: **In all ways but the physical, she was a shadow of what she had been; in the first months of her exile, between the drinks that let her sleep and the stims that let her feel, she wondered if it would have been better to fall to the Dark with Revan.

**Always: **"Will the Council take us back?" whispered the young Knight; Revan just grinned fiercely and said "I don't know, but they will _always_ remember us."

**Content: **Every day, Jolee gathers his herbs, hunts his food, secures his home against predators, and tells himself he is content.

**Certain: **"Are you certain?" Malak asked Revan as they stood at the door of a long-buried tomb; she flipped her hand in an impatient beckoning gesture and walked inside, leaving him wondering whether it mattered that she hadn't answered his question.

**Scorch: **Lightning scorched along her skin, and Revan flung herself away from it, wondering if she'd survive this fight; Malak knew all her tricks, but she didn't know his, not any more.

**Bore: **"I'm bored," Mission proclaimed, realizing her mistake only when Jolee grinned and pointed her toward a bin filled with unassembled medkits.

**Study: **Mical had told himself that his studies were enough, that the Republic needed wisdom in any form, Jedi or not; a few hours with the woman who'd been his teacher so briefly convinced him that he wanted the Force as badly as he ever had.

**Minute: **In a minute, T3-M4 can run diagnostics on every computer in the ship; in an hour, he can plot hyperspace jumps to most of known space; but after months, he is no nearer to understanding why Revan sent him away.

**Limit: **Kreia extended her senses toward her student _...my exiled one, always drawing limits that constrict her and claiming she can't go beyond them; sometimes I despair of teaching her what she must learn._


End file.
